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BY 



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^DODBRIE 



MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHN' 



A, I). MAC!* 
502 Boylutou Streit. 



Air and the School House 



BY 

PROF. S. H. WOODBRIDGE 

MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY 
BOSTON, MASS. 



A. D. MACLACHLAN 
502 Boylston Street, Boston, Mass. 



A 



SX. K 



- 

'09 



Air and the School House 



The subject of this study is a single phase of school 
hygiene. 

As a first and indisputable premise on which to base 
the study, it is proposed to assert the human right to health, 
and to whatever health is properly contributary ; that health 
is the asset of highest value, either possessable or usable, 
and that to be robbed of any measure of it is to suffer a pre- 
datory loss of a boon inalienable and priceless. 

As a second and hardly less debatable premise, it is 
further proposed to assert that the school is the appropriate 
pkce for the wisest, the fullest and the insistent practice 
of hygiene, and also the most effective field for illustrating 
and for teaching the principles and practice of that bene- 
ficent science. 



Considered in its largest sense the inherent, constitu- 
tional, and therefore the inalienable, right of the human 
race is to life, health and happiness. The desperate tenacity 
with which man holds to life, and to his right to it, is a 
matter of common knowledge and experience. Life is 
vital being; health is the fullness, the completeness, of 
that being; happiness is the joy incident to the experience and 
reward of that being. Life is that which makes health 
and happiness possibilities, the sine qua non of those pos- 
sibilities. It is therefore of all things most prized, and in 
the first, and to the last, degree contended for as a right, 



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4 Air and the School House 

and held fast to as an experience. It is because of this 
preeminence of life, solely as a state of being, that its 
legitimate accompaniments and possessions of health and 
happiness are too commonly relegated to an undeservedly 
inferior rank in the order of values of the inalienable 
rights. Man is so content with the fact and the experience 
of mere being that he too often fails to aspire to and set 
a true value upon the largeness and richness and reward of that 
being which are equally his inalienable right and privilege with 
being itself. Hence the need of continuous appeal to stim- 
ulate him to a knowledge and appreciation of the possibili- 
ties and the value of the larger and richer rights of his 
inheritance as the summit and the highest nobility of a 
Universe Creation. 

The scope of the immediate discussion is confined to 
the human right to physical health. To prove that, as a 
whole, human health is miserably in arrears of its attain- 
able possibilities requires no elaborate demonstration. 
The shortness, the ailments, the suffering, the ineffective- 
ness of human life are seen upon all sides and are too often 
read in the faces of the multitude. The unseen and the 
unread evidence of that lapse are as much greater than 
the seen and the read as are the hidden tales of the sea 
vaster than those spread on its surface. 

Some students of anatomy and physiology affirm that 
the normal length of animal life, brute and human, is five 
times the period required for the full development of the 
skeleton, or frame work, upon which the body is built. 
Because of the intelligence with which man is endowed, 
his superior ability to protect himself by housing and cloth- 
ing against stress of cold and heat and storm, because of 
his range and choice of foods adapted to his varied needs, 
his available aids in medical and surgical science and prac- 
tice, and skilful nursing and serviceable drugs, man should 
logically far outstrip the brute in the proportion of his 
actual to his theoretical length of days. 

The reverse is woefully true. The full development of 
the human frame is reached at the age of twenty-one years, 



Air and the School House 5 

and theoretical life should therefore run through one hun- 
dred and five years. Forty years ago the average life of 
man was but little more than thirty years. Today, because 
of enlarged and better diffusion of knowledge relating to 
the fostering and protection of life, the average age in civ- 
ilized communities has advanced to and a little passed 
forty years, and the race has at the present time possessed 
itself of forty per cent, of its birth right to length of vital 
being. Brute life, — with an intelligence limited to instinct, 
with narrowed resources for the sustaining, protecting and ad- 
vancing of life, beset by the stress of adverse weather, the 
blight of disease and without man's protection against the 
menace of destroying foes, — in humiliating fashion far out- 
strips human life in the stamina, superabundance, superb- 
ness and percentage longevity of its life. 

The cause of such disparity in favor of brute life is not 
unavoidably inherent in the constitution and environment 
of man; but, rather, is made possible in the superior organism 
and faculties with which he is endowed and which exalt 
him above the brute, and give to him the powers of intelli- 
gence, choice and will. The more complex and refined 
the organism, and the conditions of its dependence and 
functions, the more sensitive it is to changes in those de- 
pendent conditions. In this respect man pays a high price for 
his exaltation to the head of the vital terrestrial creation. 
In his body man is liable to ills from which the brute is 
either wholly or relatively free. There are infectious dis- 
eases which decimate the human race that do not invade 
brute life. The glory of man, — his faculties and powers 
which most differentiate him from the brute, of reason, 
of imagination, of refined and exquisite sensation, of in- 
vention, — in these are his dangers as well as his exaltation. 
Man suffers in himself, and inflicts suffering on others, 
through diseases, abnormalities and degradations in the 
uses of his powers and faculties which are unknown to and 
impossible in the brute. He is the victim of his own evil 
choices and vices from which the brute is exempt. In his 
creative power, and in his hold upon, and large industrial 



6 Air and the School House 

use of Nature's vast store of energy, he is maimed and 
crushed by the very forces he harnesses. 

A study of this matter discloses a situation not credi- 
table to man's present standing in the vital scale. He is 
yet far from entering into a full possession of his right to 
life. He is prone to find his satisfaction in the fact, rather 
than in the fullness, of existence ; in days, rather than in 
length and fulness of days ; in conscious being, rather than in 
the richness and completion of being. In this is the "total 
depravity" of man, and the rationale of all human and divine 
altruistic effort to bring man to his better self through a 
knowledge and due appreciation of the greatness of his 
right to life in its abundance, to the largest health and the 
richest happiness. 

The theme of this study involves, and is limited to the 
dependence of life's physical well being on air. For pro- 
tection against adverse weather conditions, of wind, storm 
and cold, man devises and builds for himself houses. In 
doing so he considers chiefly the things which most im- 
mediately and forcibly impress themselves on his delicate 
sensorium. The vital relation to his well being of the 
purity of the invisible air, which he shuts out by his build- 
ing, is a matter of relative indifference to him because of 
his ignorance, indifference, or incredulity. The unseen 
and not immediately sense-impressing things of life do not 
appeal to or concern him as do the seen and more forcibly 
impressing things. He lives in the immediates and the 
evidents of his day. What he devises and puts up for 
his protection is likely to become the harbor of atmospheric 
impurities which ultimately become the causers of depleted 
vitality and fatal disease. By the act of temporary pro- 
tection against a tangible and seen danger he invites and 
hastens premature destruction through occult sources. It 
is in the region of the occult where the deep sources of life 
lie, and yet it is there where man's knowledge is most de- 
fective and his need of education is the largest. 

It is the house which man builds for his protection 
which must be saved from becoming his destruction, 



Air and the School House 7 

which the regenerating work must first reach, and in which 
it must be ultimately done. What the house and home are, 
the town, the state, and the nation are. 



II 

Mankind is in sore need of enlightenment touching his 
inalienable rights, even the primal rights to life. The race 
must be educated as it is not today before it can know the 
high value and far reaching meaning of that right. All 
facts relating to that right are of basic importance, and 
must be given a large place in all development of human 
conception, knowledge and rational activity and effort be- 
fore man attains to his true place in the universal order of 
creation and vital being. 

In this is the highest function of the school, in that 
education which most closely and fundamentally relates to 
life itself, to qualify for individual, domestic and community 
life. Woe must be the ultimate lot of any land where the 
aim and end of the school is material, industrial, mercenary. 
These are in the territory of the R's, a letter of subordinate 
place in all the alphabets of the human race. The Hs have 
a relatively superior place, and should be given that place 
practically and permanently. Reading, 'Riting and 'Rith- 
metic are the distorted trinity of rudimentary action. Hy- 
giene, Health and Happiness are the beauteous trinity of 
exalted being. In the common schools, as also in the 
higher, the themes of being should outrank those of inci- 
dental and even of fundamental relationship thereto. 

Of primary importance is the user, of secondary im- 
portance is the tool. The combination of a tool and a 
fool results in waste,— of material, time, energy, purpose, 
patience, and generally of the tool itself. Drugs on the 
shelf of the apothecary cure no disease. In the hands of 
the novice, or quack, they are quite likely to tempt disease 
or deal death. In the hands of the trained physician, fitted 
to use them, they may ease pain, remove obstacles to the 
restorative work of vital processes, stimulate vital ener- 



8 Air and the School Hotise 

gies. "The man behind the gun" determines the effect- 
iveness of the Aveapon. The Hs behind the Rs determine 
the effectiveness of all the work of our elaborate and costly 
enginery of education. The Rs are worth all they cost; 
the worth of the Hs cannot be measured by their cost. 
The first right of the race is to be, and health is the 
measure of being. The second right is to the elementary 
tools through which being may assert itself. The primal 
rights of life are two : first of being, second of action ; the 
one, of the Hs, the other of the Rs. The school that does 
not duly guard and foster both, is itself in sore need of pri- 
mary education. 

The public school stands for public good. In every- 
thing in which that good may be fostered through the 
school, should the school be made to serve its largest and 
broadest purpose. The strength of a nation is not meas- 
ured by its masses, but by energies multiplied into masses. 
The health of a nation is the chief factor in its energy. 
Therefore, as a matter of appropriate service, the public 
has the right to demand that the school shall serve the 
interests of the state by continuously teaching and prac- 
ticing the principles of hygiene. 

To adopt the principle, as many ignorant, and there- 
fore reluctant taxpayers do, that it is enough that school 
houses and school house practices should be as hygienic 
as the homes and the household habits from which scholars 
come, is to reason loosely, superficially and unprofitably. 
Scholars come from hygienically good, and hygienically 
bad, homes. Shall those who come from the best sanitary 
conditions be subjected in the school house to the worst 
home conditions reproduced in the school? Or, shall those 
who come from the poorest home environment be given in 
the school the benefit of that wholesomeness found in the 
homes of the best cared for children? Or, shall the school 
house be the compromise composite of the home hygiene 
of all the houses which the school represents? Shall the 
school be content to simply avoid the most menacing of 
hygienic dangers? Shall it not rather insist upon, illus- 
trate, and inculcate hygienic excellencies? 



Air and the School House g 

The assertion of this paper is that from the school 
house, as a fountain head, should run out to every home and 
community of homes it serves, or can serve, streams of 
largest benefit; not merely knowledge of spelling, penning 
and figuring ; but, more than all, that of life and of living. 

The school house is a place, and generally the only 
place, to which, under a more or less rigid compulsion of 
law, the public sends its children. Compulsion does not 
end with that sending. The school house door is not a 
dividing gate between responsibility on the outside, and ir- 
responsibility on the inside. The responsibility which com- 
pels the child to enter the school house door, equally com- 
pels the public to exercise a proper care for the child after 
he has entered. The public is without right to send, if 
having sent it fails to protect. Its right in sending is limited 
by its efforts and its success in protecting. It sends to 
acquire the Rs. It protects to promote the Hs. The ratios 
of the respective values of the Hs and the Rs fix also the 
relative weights of obligation with respect to them. 

The school, therefore, is the appropriate place for the 
hygiene, not of the unhealthy homes, nor of the average 
healthy home, but of the healthiest, — actual and practical. 
In matters of hygiene the school house should be the 
teacher of, and object lesson to, the home. In the school 
house, vital energy should be emphasized above any instru- 
ment of its use, health above books, pens or blackboards. 
And, finally, the building into which the public compels its 
children to go, and to live and work, that public must main- 
tain in wholesomeness, and the more so as dangers to 
health increase with the herding of all sorts and conditions 
of individuals together within confined spaces. 

The hygiene of the school house includes everything 
which effects the health of the school house occupants. 
It begins with the hygiene of location and environment; of 
soil, of dwellings and of dwellers in the neighborhood ; of 



io Air and flic School House 

occupations and industries which do or do not taint the 
earth, the sky, the air, the water, or offend the sight or 
pure sense of the school community. It concerns itself 
with recreation grounds and facilities, with exercise, with 
bathing and clothing, with floors and walls, with desks and 
chairs, with light and color, with school lunches and the 
home diet, with water supply and drinking cups, with 
books and pencils, and with such an ethereal thing as air. 

Any one of these subjects, fully treated, is quite enough, 
and some of them are more than enough, for a single hour 
theme. The limits of the present study are narrowed down 
to one, and that one, air and the school house. 

There is one fundamental 'fact of our being and ac- 
tivity which at the outset must be clearly understood if 
the relation of air to life is to be intelligently grasped, and 
made the basis of correct theory and successful practice in 
the field of school house hygiene. 

All are so familiar in a crude way, with energy and 
action, with force and motion, with life and industry, that 
to devote even passing thought to a study of such matters 
in such a brief discussion as that now undertaken may seem 
quite uncalled for. Yet, if all that is involved in so simple 
a procedure as the speaking of one and the hearing of 
another could be set forth in its deepest and its truest 
aspect, the disclosure would come to many as a revelation 
startling in its wonderfulness, if not inspiring in its awful- 
ness. 

A speaker speaks, primarily, because there is within his 
reach an energy ready and waiting his command for ac- 
tion; and, secondly, an intelligence and will which lay hold 
upon and direct that energy to chosen ends. That energy, 
put into voice, is lost to the speaker ; is given to the air 
which brings it to the listener's ears ; what was part of the 
speaker's being becomes the air's action, and is no longer 
his, but is gone, perhaps forever, beyond his command or 
control, and is now beating with wave and ripple against 
the tympana of the listener's ears, setting them in vibra- 
tory motion, and that motion is transmitted through ex- 



Air and the School House n 

quisite mechanism and sensor nerve to the perceiving brain. 
All is done, the speaking, the air pulsating, the hearing, 
the perceiving, by one and the self same energy, now the 
speaker's by possession and control; now gone from him 
and speeding through the air ; now lost to the air and resi- 
dent in the vibratory motion of the ear drum ; now lost to 
drum and caught by the nerves and carried to the brain ; — 
that is the one-tenth of a second partial history of a bit, an 
infinitesimal bit, of Universal energy in action; a one-tenth 
of a second story in a history eternal of that small fragment 
of energy. 

Human agency did not create that energy ; human 
knowledge and will and skill never did, do not now, 
and never will create so much as that infinitesimal frag- 
ment of energy. Men can apprehend and appropriate and 
direct energy already existing ; that is all. It is that faculty 
which in part differentiates him from the brute. The 
brute's range of energy resource is limited to processes 
within his own body. Man discovers, appropriates and 
uses energy resident in matter outside his body, and which 
is not and cannot be made a part of his body. Ages ago 
he spread his sails and built his wind mills to catch the 
dynamic energy of the winds for driving his ships and 
grinding his corn, and put the buckets of his wheels into the 
streams to dip out and to utilize the gravitation energy 
of the waterfalls to do the work of his factory and mill. 
And now, in this day of his intensest activity, he is appro- 
priating and using the vast stores of but recently discov- 
ered energy resident in the chemical relations in which car- 
bon stands to oxygen. He changes the chemical energy 
resident in coal and in air into the thermal energy of fire, 
and changes that into the kinetic energy of steam, and that 
again into the dynamic energy of enginery and machinery, 
and so does his prodigious work. By thus laying hold of the 
eternal energies stored within his reach and for his use in fuel 
and in air, and in chemical energies elsewhere found, he today 
propels his steamships, speeds his railway train, operates his 
mills, carries on his industries, cuts his way through rocks, 



12 Air and the School House 

tunnels mountains, digs canals and hurls huge projectiles of 
destruction at his foes. For the doing of all that he does 
man creates, and can create, no energy. Apart from the 
eternal energy he is as helpless, as lifeless, as energy-less 
as a branch cut from its vine. He is more than that severed 
branch only as he possesses himself of and directs to his 
purposes the energy of his environment, energy which has 
been, is now and will continue to be. Now it is within his 
reach ; today he uses it ; tomorrow it will not cease to be, 
but will be for the most part beyond his appropriation or 
use. 

Man, then, is a creature endowed with a beginning of 
intelligence and of directive will, placed in the midst of an 
inconceivably vast and eternal flood of energy, a rill of which 
is now within his reach. He lives and moves and has his 
being in and because of that energy. He is lifeless, power- 
less, nothing apart from that. He is industriously great 
and mighty in proportion as he discovers, appropriates and 
wisely directs that energy. He is small, a weakling, a 
degenerate, as he fails to make his own, and to direct to 
his own uses, that energy, or, having it, dissipates it. 

In this simple, all inclusive and to every thoughtful 
mind awe insniring truth is hidden the profound secret of 
human life, human possibility, human destiny. Humanity's 
life and glory as the offspring of the Eternal, as also hu- 
manity's death and ignomy, — as that of the foolish son 
who sells his birthright for a mess of pottage, or that of 
the prodigal son who wastes his substance in riotous liv- 
ing, — are all locked in this great truth hidden in man's 
being. 



O/v 



IV 



What has such truth to do with air and the school 
house? Fundamentally everything. Air in its relation to 
life cannot be apprehended in its full significance, in its 
rationale, if the sources of vital energy are obscured from 



Air and the School House 13 

view. Reason concerns itself with "why?", commercialism 
with "what?", engineering with "how?". It is the rationale 
of the subject with which the present study chiefly deals. 
Why is air a requisite to health and vigor? And why is 
purity of air essential to physical vitality at its best? These 
basal questions first considered, attention will then be given 
to some commercial aspects of the problem which more 
especially interest the economist, the materialist and the 
pockets of taxpayers. The engineering phases of the sub- 
ject cannot be treated in the space at command, and are 
discussed in another paper. 
N. In the first place, then, what has air to do with life? 
In its essence the question has already been answered. In 
its application more remains to be said. The human body 
is essentially an energy transformer and user. Placed 
within its reach is food out of the earth on one side, and 
the oxygen out of the air on the other. Either food or 
air, without the other, is powerless to develop vital energy, 
just as much as water or earth would be powerless without 
the mutual attraction which is technically called "energy 
of gravitation" to develop dynamic energy. Water alone, 
or the earth alone, cannot turn the miller's wheel. Water 
and earth, each possessing energy because of the mutual 
gravitational relation existing between them, are set in 
motion by those energies which change into a usable form 
when that resident gravitation energy is transphased into 
the active and kinetic form of the waterfall. The energy 
called gravitation is thus changed to energy of motion in 
the fall, and the motion of the water, yielded in part to 
man's paddle which he dips into the stream, is transmitted 
to the saw and other utilizing machinery. 

So also with coal and air ; coal alone is inert ; the oxy- 
gen of the air alone is equally so; yet, by virtue of the 
relation they sustain to each other in the realm of chemical 
affinity, they are mutually possessed of energy in the form, 
or phase, known as chemical energy, which man may change 
to thermal energy through fire, and draw upon through 
boilers as he draws the energy out of the stream with the 



14 Air and the School House 

scooping paddles of his wheel. Thus the gravitation en- 
ergy resident in the above water and the below earth, and 
the chemical energy resident in the unoxidized carbon in 
coal and the uncarbonated oxygen in air are among the princi- 
pal sources upon which man today depends for his in- 
dustrial enterprises. The gravitation energy of the earth 
and the water in the stream is changed by man's appre- 
hension, appropriation and direction into the dynamic en- 
ergy of the water wheel; and the chemical energy of the 
coal and the air is changed in the same manner into ther- 
mal energy, or heat, and in that phase is harnessed to 
man's industrial work. 

The greater part of the stores of energy in the midst 
of which man has his transient being are about him in a 
stable form of potential utility, such as gravitation energy 
and chemical energy, and that active form which these same 
energies take when changed, chiefly through man's volition 
and agency, into phases of actual utility are brief and pass- 
ing. One energy is in reposeful, the other in active phase. 
One the mutual pull, or force, of masses under the action of 
gravitation, or the mutual pull of atoms under the action of 
chemical affinity. The other, the flow of water, or the motion 
of the molecules which is known as heat, and which physicists 
know as thermal energy. Both of these motions, — water in 
the falls and molecules in vibratory action — are active and 
transient; they are simply phases of transformation of energy 
from one type into another. Man is gifted with the power of 
changing energy forms from those of repose to those of 
action, and of then using for his purpose those of action. 

In the chemical relations existing between one pound 
of carbon and two and two-thirds pounds of oxygen, there 
is energy in repose, which, changed into energy of action in 
the thermal state, is sufficient to do the work of raising a 
ton weight from the sea level to the summit of Mount 
Washington. The prodigiousness of man's work today 
may be roughly gauged by the rate of his appropriation 
and using of this single stored energy of repose. Out of 
the "strength of the hills" he is digging the fuel factor in 



Air and the School House 15 

that energy at a rate represented in three millions of tons 
of coal a day. In the air about him is a vast store of oxy- 
gen estimated at eleven hundred million millions of tons; 
a supply which by a marvelous, stupendous and ceaseless 
process of sustained replenishment is renewed as rapidly 
as it is exhausted. 

Until within a few years man has been in ignorance 
of the immense reservoirs of energy-in-repose at his hand. 
The sources of the immense industrial strides which have 
marked the development of manufacturing and commercial 
growth within the last century are found in the coal of the 
hills and the oxygen of the air. 

That strength of the hills and that quickening spirit of 
the air, are only man's findings, and are none of his creat- 
ings. The power that vitalizes the body, that speeds the 
train, that propels the ship, is man's only because he can lay 
hold, and in some measure has laid hold, of the flowing trails 
of infinite energy, as with awing majesty it moves through 
the stupendous sweep of a boundless universe, — the infinite 
"I am that I Am." 

What man purposely does with and through fuel and 
air, he does less consciously with and through food and air. 
The boiler furnace is fed fuel and is given draught. Man 
eats food and breathes air. In both the process is one of 
conversion of chemical energy into thermal energy, of en- 
ergy of repose into energy of action. The furnace, boiler 
and engine are, in combination, an energy transformer. 
The human and the brute body is equally a transformer, — 
a marvellous furnace, an exquisitely perfect mechanism, 
in a combination which for dynamic economy the ingenuity 
of man cannot match in any mechanical creation. The 
body, supremely fitted to its function, is purposed and 
fashioned to receive energy stored in food and air, to trans- 
form that energy into vital energy, the dynamic energy of 
muscle, the finer motor energy of nerve, the mysterious 
and directive energy of brain. 

Herein is the basal truth upon which the present study 
rests. The life of the human body, all its voluntary and 



1 6 Air and the School House 

involuntary activities, is energy in action, energy not cre- 
ated of the body, not continuing within the body, not to 
perish with the body ; but energy which was in other forms 
and in other matter yesterday, is in vital form in the body 
today, and will be in other form and matter tomorrow. 
The body is the receiver, the director, the user of such tran- 
sition energy as it can appropriate out of the infinite store 
about it. It receives the energy in its chemical form, and 
transforms it into its vital form. Therein is the rationale 
of eating and of breathing, the necessity of aerating our 
bodies, and of ventilating our dwellings and other habita- 
tions. 

Without air, fuel and food remain useless carbon ; 
without the carbon of fuel and food, air contains useless 
oxygen. Both are alike inactive in repose without the com- 
bination which transforms energy of repose into energy 
of action. 



.V. 

The process of vital energy production involves change 
in both food and the air used in the process.The food once 
so used is not usable again. The air once so used is no 
further usable in like manner. The principal changes in 
air resulting from its contribution to vital energy are five : 
oxygen is withdrawn from the air, an equal volume of 
carbon dioxide is added to the air, water vapor is yielded 
and taken up by the air, the temperature of the air is 
raised by the heat evolved in the process and imparted to 
it, and organic matter, oozing out through the pores of the 
skin, and eliminated from the body through the mucous 
membranes, is floated on the air. The changes correspond 
to those produced in air by a boiler furnace fire, — oxygen 
reduction, production of gases, vapor, heat and smoke. To 
repass the undiluted contents of the chimney through the 
boiler fire would extinguish it as surely as water would 
quench it. The rebreathing of undiluted expired air would 
as quickly put out the vital flame. 



Air and the School House ly 

The question then presents itself, what dilution of the 
cast off products and residuals attending the energy trans- 
formation processes which issue in vital energy is necessary 
for the production of vitality at its best? If the question 
be asked in reference to the food and drink factors in that 
transformation process, the universal answer would be 
strenuously emphatic in its demands for a purity of supply 
which should completely eliminate the body wastes from 
food and drinks. The very suggestion of contamination 
of such sort is repulsive in the extreme. No one valuing 
rightly his own health could knowingly be persuaded to 
select for even temporary residence a house or a city which 
discharges its excremental and other sewage up stream 
and takes its water supply from the down stream of any 
brook or river, unless it were of torrential proportions. 

When, however, that same question relates to the at- 
mospheric factor in the vital energy production process, 
it is commonly treated either trivially or incredulously. 
Yet not so if the fire is that of the boiler furnace rather 
than that of the body. To feed undiluted waste chimney 
gases to a fire would, by common intelligence, be ranked 
in the same folly with feeding such fire with ashes, and to 
mix chimney gases with the air-indraught to fire would be 
judged as harmful to boiler efficiency as to mix ashes with 
the coal fed to the fire. 

As a matter of practical experience, the quality of air 
fed to a fire is of larger importance than is the quality of 
coal fed to it. Ask any experienced fireman as to the 
first essential for maintaining a good fire and he will reply 
"a good draught." Without that he can neither build nor 
keep his fire, however good the coal may be, or however 
skilful his stoking. Let the draught be good and the coal 
poor, he can then make and keep a hot fire by dint of 
hard and skilful stoking. 

So also in the matter of stoking, or fire tending; the 
quality of even that is of larger importance in the matter of 
fire maintenance than is the quality of coal used in the 
process. Poor stoking makes wasteful work of the burn- 



18 Air and the School House 

ing of the best coal, and of the using of the best of draught. 
Good stoking, on the other hand, may make a fine fire of 
poor fuel with a good draught. The sequence of impor- 
tance is, then, first, excellence of air; second, skilfulness 
in stoking; third, excellence of fuel. 

Turning now to the body, the physical energy trans- 
former, the relative values of pure air, stimulating exer- 
cise and pure food will be found to be the same as those 
of draught, stoking and fuel for the boiler system. The 
exact proportion of oxygen in the air is of vastly greater 
importance than is the precise proportion of carbon in the 
food. Even the quantity and quality of the stoking ex- 
ercise, which stirs up and cleans out the animal fires, is of 
a larger vital importance than is the proportion of carbon 
in the food fuel. The average maximum of physical 
strength and endurance for doing the world's hard work 
is found in men of the dinner pail brigade, whose food is 
for the most part coarse and too often ill prepared, and with 
small reference to exact proportions of sugar, starch and 
fats, of carbon and nitrogen; but whose abundant exercise 
in open air does for his vital fires what good stoking does 
for the boiler fires, which would otherwise become clogged 
with ash and clinker. 



i 



VI. 



A 



Because that common, costless, abundant thing, air, 
envelops man as the great ocean does the fish that is almost 
lost in its waste of waters, he is prone to think it of com- 
monplace and minor value, and its exact purity as of small 
account. Yet with marvelous exactness the purity of that 
waste of air is continuously maintained. Carbon and oxy- 
gen in immense proportions are continuously combining 
the world over in energy transforming processes, the daily 
combination product of carbon dioxide reaching twenty- 
two million tons, six million tons of carbon oxidized, and 
sixteen million tons of oxygen carbonized. And while this 
stupendous process is proceeding, vegetation is daily ab- 



Air and the School House 19 

sorbing these twenty-two million tons of carbon dioxide, 
keeping the six million tons of carbon for leaf and blade of 
forest and field, and giving back to the air the sixteen mil- 
lion tons of oxygen, so maintaining the richness of the air 
on one side, and the world's supply of carbon in vegetation 
on the other. 

One, if not the principal, reason for the indifference of 
the thoughtless with reference to atmospheric impurity is 
in the general invisibleness of that menace, and its fail- 
ure to instantly impress itself upon the physical sensorium. 
The air and, for the most part, its contents, are invisible 
either because of perfect transparency or the minuteness 
of that in it which is not transparent. In this case that 
which is transparent ceases to be apparent, and that which is 
minute is not impressive. The fallacy of basing reasoning 
solely on the impressions of sensation characterizes primi- 
tive and un-schooled mentality. Yet the energies and causes 
which lie back of, and are operative in, most visible phe- 
nomena are invisible. The swift movement of the great 
steamer through the sea, and of the flying express over its 
track, are the motions of aqueous molecules transferred to, 
and becoming the motion of, the ship and train. 

The invisibly minute and imperceptible is there, as 
A elsewhere, in primal relation to the visible and the im- 
pressive. Back of, and in causal relation to, the great 
plagues which have decimated the peoples of cities and 
nations has always been a mal-aria — a badness of air — 
which because of complete invisibility has been thought 
to have been of the genus of an evil spirit. The unseen 
dust particles in the air of dwellings and the street number 
from thousands to millions in each cubic inch of air, and 
among them are often found the microbes of deadly dis- 
eases. Into one thousandth of a cubic inch could be 
crowded the bacilli of tuberculosis in such multitudes that 
if the individual bacilli making up that crowded colony 
were evenly distributed through the air of a building of 
one million cubic feet contents, the number in each cubic 
foot of that air would be one thousand, and the number 



20 Air and the School House 

inhaled with the breath fifteen thousand an hour by a 
single breather. The microbic agencies productive of our 
infectious and most dreaded contagious and malignant dis- 
eases belong in a realm of minuteness too great for de- 
tection by the natural sight. 

An alteration by so much as an atom in the chemical 
composition of substances may, and often does, so change 
the character of a product as to make it hardly recognizable 
as a relative of combinations to which it is constructively 
closely akin. Two atoms of oxygen in combination with 
one of carbon make a gas so harmless that when diluted 
with air in proportion of one to twenty-five, the mixture 
may be temporarily breathed with impunity ; whereas 
one atom of oxygen in combination with one of carbon 
produces a gas so deadly that one part diluted in one 
thousand of air is quickly fatal. Metallurgists have found 
that a change in carbon equal to one-thousandth part of the 
total weight of steel so alters its hardness and ability to 
resist wear that the degree of hardness attending the pres- 
ence or absence of that thousandth part of carbon is quickly 
evident in the life of railroad rails under the stress of use. 
The variation of a thousandth part of carbon in the com- 
position of the dies which put the nation's impress on its 
coins changes the steel from that which can sharply stamp 
forty-five thousand pieces, into that which fails before the 
forty-fifth impress is made. 

So also the variations in the methods of aggregation 
of the selfsame molecules almost incredibly changes the 
physical characteristics of the resulting substances. Char- 
coal, graphite, camphor and the diamond are the same 
in elementary substance. Ozone is intense, and oxygen 
mild in oxidizing activity, though the only difference be- 
tween them is that one is made up of three, and the other 
of two atoms of oxygen. 

What is true of atoms and of molecules in chemical 
and adhesive combination is equally so of worlds and 
systems in gravitation combination and celestial balance. 
Neither immensity nor minuteness is, or can be, free from 



Air and the School House 21 

the universal law of exactitude in the order, economy or 
processes of Nature. All solar and stellar combinations 
are as exactly poised in mechanical balance as are the 
atoms of the laboratory compound in chemical balance. 
Let but one of the multitude of bodies in any celestial sys- 
tem forsake its orbit, and the perfect harmony of "the music 
of the spheres" is broken, until finally chaos may take the 
place of order, the balance be broken, and "the heavens roll 
together as a scroll" and "melt with fervent heat." What 
a stupendous final destruction consequent upon so small 
an initial departure! In nothing is Nature haphazard or 
approximate, but in everything, whether minute or im- 
mense, inexorably exact. Nowhere and in nothing is it 
safe to measure the proportions of final issues by the seem- 
ing insignificance of initial causes. Everywhere and in 
everything causes which seem insignificant, issue in results 
which appear out of all proportion to the initiative. It is 
the old and familiar story of the rudder and the ship, the 
tongue and its issues, the little fire and the great matter 
it kindleth, the wind and the whirlwind, the atom and its 
transformation of the physical properties of compounds, 
the diminutive microbe and the devastating plague. 

Where conditions are most sensitive and processes 
most delicate, the results consequent upon causes may be 
expected to be more marked and decisive than when condi- 
tions and processes are neither sensitive nor delicate. The 
human energy-transforming system is one of exquisite sen- 
sitiveness, and of supreme delicacy of adjustment and per- 
formance as compared with the boiler system of energy 
transformation and operation. If, then, it can be clearly 
shown that the relation of air quantity and quality to the 
complete performance of a boiler plant is one which seri- 
ously affects the economic operation of that plant, it not 
only may hypothetically, but it may reasonably, be inferred 
that the vital energy output of the far more sensitive and 
intricate human system must be at least equally effected 
by change in atmospheric quantity and quality. The 
draught through a boiler fire may be so excessive as to put 



22 Air and the School House 

out the fire. A lesser, though too strong draught, lowers 
the temperature of combustible gases and carries to chim- 
ney as waste an excessive amount of heat produced. On 
the other hand too little draught fed to the fire results in 
incomplete combustion of fuel and the heavy waste attend- 
ing but partially oxidated fuel. For results of highest ef- 
fect, the draught must be adjusted with precision to the 
combustion rate to be accomplished. 

Waste attends any variation from the exactness of the 
conditions upon which the completeness of desired results 
depends. The effect on illuminating flames of minute 
changes in air from its normal constituent proportions has 
been already referred to, and further shown by recent ex- 
perimentation. Remove from the air oxygen equal to one 
five-hundredth of the air volume, and replace that oxygen 
by the gaseous product of carbon oxidation, carbon acid 
gas, and the luminosity of the candle flame drops one- 
twentieth. That is, a change in air of one produces a 
change in luminosity of twenty-five. It is highly significant 
that such results should attend changes so slight in condi- 
tions affecting the lifeless, senseless, unimaginative flame 
of a candle, a lamp, a gas jet, and that there should be such 
manifest responsive sensitiveness to slight changes in the 
atmospheric conditions upon which ordinary combustion 
and illuminating processes depend. The greater the deli- 
cacy which attends and affects the combustion process and 
the luminosity of the flame, the greater the ratio becomes 
between the producing cause and the resulting effect in the 
illuminating product. In the concentrated flame of the 
German student lamp is an illuminating flame of the highest 
development, intensity and illumination combined with sen- 
sitiveness of conditions affecting luminosity. Breathe into 
the inner tube supplying that flame with air a quantity of 
expired breath which changes the composition of the total 
air fed to that flame but one in two hundred, and the bril- 
liant flame assumes a sickly paleness, and dwarfs into flick- 
ering smallness useless for illuminating effects. 

The higher and more intricate an organism, the larger 



Air and the School House 23 

and more involved and involving are the effects upon it of 
any change in the conditions upon which its processes and 
functions are dependent. A plant has a form of life ; in its 
organization and vital functions it is higher and more intri- 
cate than the flame, and is therefore more susceptible than 
is the flame, to variations from the normal in the conditions 
upon which its vitality depends. At the Mt. Vernon home 
of Washington are large conservatories filled now, as in 
his day, with luxuriant growths of plant and flower. Those 
conservatories are now heated with hot water circulated in 
pipe coils within the enclosures. If unprotected, the pipes 
grow rusty and shabby in appearance. The place is a Mecca 
of national resort. The conservatories, even their pipes, are 
on exhibition. An enterprising agent representing a manu- 
facturer of paints interested the inexperienced custodian 
in protecting and ornamenting those pipes with his paint. 
It was applied to the pipes when the weather was warm and 
plants were summering without. All through the hot sum- 
mer and early fall that paint was given time and air to 
dry. It dried hard, smooth, glossy, and became all that 
was prophesied and desired in appearance. It had ceased 
to emit any odor of paint, or to sensibly affect the air in any 
way. Moreover, before the plants were rehabilitated for 
the winter, the pipes were heated for expelling from the 
paint all possible traces of volatile residuum. The plants 
were then reinstated, all in a normally healthy condition. 
It was soon noticed that the foliage began to wilt, and that 
blossoms faded and drooped, and after a little all the life 
of the conservatory plants was hopelessly gone. The sus- 
pected pipes were then given a prolonged treatment with 
superheated water. The conservatories were aired day and 
night, until again not a suggestion of any abnormal qual- 
ity of air could be detected, nor a trace of anything injurious 
found in it. A second time the conservatories were stocked 
with new and healthy plants ; and again, the flowers paled, 
and the leaves, whitening at the edges, withered and died. 
Then again those pipes were heated, this time in the 
hot flame of a plumber's furnace, inch by inch, until brought 



24 Air and the School House 

to a low glow of heat, and until everything organic and vol- 
atile had been expelled and burned from the paint, and from 
the very iron of the pipes ; and then, when again the en- 
closures had been freely and lengthily aired, the renewed 
installation of plants lived and grew and blossomed as well 
provided for plants should live and grow and bloom. 

Here, then, is the emphatic evidence of the lifeless 
flame, and the equally significant testimony of the living 
plant, to the effects of change in minute degree in the con- 
stituent quality of the air. Neither flame nor plant repre- 
sents the highest and most complex system of organism. 
For that we look to man, endowed with sensation, with the 
power and play of thought and imagination, with all their 
introactive and reflex effects upon the vital flame. What 
effect has change of air upon the intensity, the brilliancy 
and the vigor of that flame? What physician does not know 
it? What to thousands hovering between life and death has 
change of air meant, from inland to seashore air, from low- 
land to mountain air? What the quality difference in those 
airs? What makes one life taking and the other life giving? 
By what means can the difference be measured? What 
chemical test so delicate as to determine it? If variations 
which are so minute as to be termed "traces" are so potent 
vitally, what shall be said of changes which are so gross 
as to be easily measured by methods not refined, and which 
need no delicate balance to detect their presence, but which 
through rankness and density are often discerned by the 
sense of smell, and made immediately and conspicuously 
evident by the dullness and languor in animal or brute Kfe 
exposed to them? If a change of one in the air produces 
a change of twenty-five in the brightness of the candle 
flame, what will a like air change effect in the vital flame? 

The answer is incontrovertible in the volume of its 
facts and in the value of its unimpeachable logic. Because 
of the complexity, the delicacy, the sensitiveness, the sus- 
ceptibility of the vital flame, what should be the expected 
result? If the candle flame pales, why should not the vital 
flame droop? If the glow of a candle flame changes to a 



Air and the School House 25 

duller and a lurid hue, why should not the cheeks of the 
breathers of the air, in which that candle so burns, redden 
with feverish flush? If when the carbon dioxide of the air 
changes from the normal, four parts in ten thousand, to 
twenty parts, the candle loses one-twentieth of its brilliancy, 
why should not alertness be changed to listlessness, quick 
and clear insight to the slow grasping of the lethargic mind? 
the keen edge of mental acumen be dulled? the finest 
flower and highest color of vital energy droop? rapidity 
and accuracy of productive work change to the plodding and 
blundering effort of depleted energy? the exhilaration of 
work with energy in surplus change to the burdensomeness 
of toil when life's edge is dulled, and there must "be put to 
the more strength" for every result achieved? 

The quality of air in a school room may easily be such 
as to effect a change in the clear brow and fine perception 
of a scholar as great as that of the keen prow and fine lines 
of an ocean racer transformed into the blunt prow and 
flat bottom of a canal boat. In attempted answer to such 
argument it has been said that men have lived and thrived 
and have done the past great work of the world without 
any such attention to air quality as is now advocated, and 
even required by law. Many may remember the school-house 
and rooms in which their early school experience was had, 
those crowded, tight, close, stove-heated rooms, all of which 
conditions have been survived in safety. Why then should 
not the children of today equally survive like conditions? 

Survive ! — the very word answers the question. It 
means, by implication, a menace. The question for that 
growing, developing, energy acquiring, that sensitive, ten- 
der, susceptible school age should never be one of surviving, 
but of reviving, and of vivifying. 

In the years ago, when those, now the older boys and 
girls, were pent up in stuffy schoolrooms, and when little 
heed was given to ventilation, the average longevity among 
civilized races was, as has already been said, from thirty-three 
to thirty-four years. Now, when sanitation, and with it ven- 
tilation, have come to claim and to hold their place among the 



A 



26 Air and the School House 

essentials to a vitalizing of life, the average years of civilized 
races has passed the forty year mark. And what, and how 
many, magnificent stalwarts are found today in men and 
women among the generation that is crowding the premature 
gray heads toward the precipitous edge of life's stage ! 

To have escaped with one's life the dangers lurking in 
the old schoolhouse does not prove the menace trivial. Be- 
cause thousands escape the battlefield unscathed, who will 
be found to affirm that the battlefield is not a place of su- 
preme danger? To learn the degree of that danger who 
watches the legions of veterans as in annual encampments 
they march to martial music in long parades through our 
city streets, but does not rather go to that place of speech- 
less and pathetic eloquence, the country's Arlington? 

VII. 

The menace of the minute is not limited to cause alone, 
but includes also effects. Effects which in the initial and 
immediate are minute, may, and often do, become great 
when cumulative. A gun trained one-tenth of a degree off 
the true line of fire departs so little from that line that only 
the experienced eye of a gunner may detect the deviation ; 
but the path of the projectile fired at the target four miles 
distant will go thirty-five feet wild of the bull's eye through 
the cumulative effect of that minute error at the gun. 

Likewise in things vital there is the inappreciable ini- 
tiative, the unavoidable cumulative, the inevitable finality 
in result. In those who are robustAexcess of vitality may 
conceal the initiative results of exposure to adverse hygi- 
enic conditions, and tendencies may be temporarily ob- 
scured. Tendency is the thing of primary importance. If 
tendency is to be determined, then sensitiveness and deli- 
cacy in the subject, and in the conditions which affect it, 
are essential. The direction of an imperceptible air current 
is not to be determined by throwing a brick into it, but 
rather a straw or a fluffy feather. Tendencies are best and 
properly observed only under conditions of delicacy of ad- 






Air and the School House 27 

justment, of sensitiveness and susceptibility to the action 
of causes under inspection. The tendency of effects of im- 
poverished and vitiated air is, therefore, not to be most 
surely discovered by exposing robust life to it. Tender- 
ness most quickly and surely discloses tendencies. The 
effect of vitiated air on frail vitality is to be noted if the 
tendency of such environment is to be truly learned. The 
feeble and puny beginning of life, the baby age, is well 
suited to that purpose. And the history of its gasping for 
better breath, and of its dying for want of it, could even 
the briefest resume of that story be given, would furnish a 
decisive demonstration of the tendency trend. In one mater- 
nity hospital the death rate for years when ventilation was 
insufficient was reduced to one-tenth when ample ventila- 
tion contributed to better sanitation. 

In the case of adults the tendency trend is less evident, 
yet significant. In the wards for adults in hospitals where, 
through shock attending accidents or operations or the 
weakening effect of disease, vitality is at a low ebb, the 
marked beneficial effects of good ventilation are also found. 
In the surgical wards of a well-known hospital the death 
rate has changed from forty-four per cent, with faulty ven- 
tilation to thirteen per cent, with free ventilation; and in 
the general wards from twenty-three without, to six with 
good ventilation. 

It is by no means necessary to limit the field of inquiry 
to baby life and hospital invalidism. Adults in average 
health and active life repeat the evidence with significant 
emphasis. When the U. S. Pension Bureau was housed 
in scattered and illy adapted and poorly ventilated build- 
ings about Washington, the average of several years of 
record showed an aggregate absence on sick leave amount- 
ing to between eighteen and nineteen thousand days a year. 
When, later, a much larger clerical force was housed in a 
new and well aired building the average of absence for an 
equal period was but little more than ten thousand days. 
The records of great prisons, and even of army stables, 
show that the strongest of men, and of brute life as well, 
are not immune from the baneful influence of impure air. 



28 Air and the School House 

Could the daily dead be numbered whose lives have 
prematurely lapsed through the cumulative effects of a 
want of that air which in its vast abundance and in its sus- 
tained purity is free to all, and an inalienable right of man, 
the record would be appalling. 

VIII. 

The dead are beyond human reach and helping. The liv- 
ing are the keepers of their brothers, the living. The present 
study relates to the obligation of the public to the children in 
the school-houses in the matter of pure air. How much air 
should be provided for them? If health and vigor were meas- 
nreable by the quantity of air supplied, there would then be no 
restricting limit upon our obligation as to the abundance 
of that supply. The facts, however, are otherwise. Too 
much air is even more dangerous than too little. Too lit- 
tle means vitiation and stagnation ; too much means 
draughts. Vitiation dulls, stupefies, enervates, depresses 
vitality, exposes the body to a multitude of waiting and 
menacing dangers. It cumulatively weakens and pros- 
trates, and gradually kills as by a slow fever. Draught, on 
the other hand, pierces to the very bone and marrow, as 
with a quick sword thrust. Its results are acute, pro- 
nounced, startling, often painful, too often deadly. Too 
strong a draught will put out, rather than intensify, a fire. 
It will also make the vital flame flicker to its extinction. 

Moreover, draught effect aside, the vitalizing effect of 
air is not proportional to the quantity furnished. With 
each increment of air, the increment of physical benefit de- 
rivable therefrom is reduced, until, at length, the gain ob- 
tainable from further increase is not commensurate with 
the cost of furnishing it. There is a primary limit within 
which the question is one of life and of death ; what quantity 
of air is absolutely needed to sustain life? There is a sec- 
ondary limit, between which and the first lies the question 
of the degree of vitalization to be furnished life. Beyond 
these two there is yet another, what quantity of air will a 



k 



Air and the School Hotise 29 

breather bear without clanger from draughts, atmospheric 
or economic? The first is the question of simply maintain- 
ing the fires ; saving them from extinction. The second is 
one of obtaining from those fires productive work of the 
highest and most continuous order. The last is one of max- 
imum limit of draught without extinction of fire, or without 
overbalancing loss. 

The question of present interest is the second. What 
are the profitable minimum and maximum limits of air 
supply? This is the commercial phase of the question of 
air in relation to the school room, the profit and loss aspect 
of ventilation. The question is practically one that any 
manufacturer might ask with reference to his boiler fires. 
Does it pay to give them draught ? Is it proposed to main- 
tain fires for the mere purpose of keeping them in an exist- 
ence, like banked fires? or, rather, for the purpose of mak- 
ing them effective to the highest practicable degree in pro- 
ductive work? So the humanitarian asks with reference to 
school houses, "Shall we ventilate to merely keep our chil- 
dren from death or sickness? or, rather, to fill them to the 
full with vital energy?" Surely the question of vital econ- 
omy is not, what least will keep the vital flame from ex- 
tinction ; but, rather, what best will bring and hold that flame 
to its fullest glow without flickering, or without exinguishing 
it in draughts. 

^ — -"This culminating question of the present discussion 
may be briefly answered by a reference to a concrete case 
— a High School. Certain students, recognized at home and 
abroad as authorities in matters of vital economy, have found 
that the effect of the vitiated air of unventilated schoolrooms 
is to reduce the work of teachers and scholars to at least 
seventy-five per cent, of that easily and regularly done in 
well ventilated rooms. The truth of that assertion has been 
demonstrated under the author's observation, and has been 
testified to by teachers of his acquaintance. That declara- 
tion bears out the already observed evidence of the candle 
flame, which for each four parts in ten thousand increase in 
atmospheric carbonic acid drops one per cent, in brilliancy. 



30 Air and the School House 

In the case in hand, let the degree of desired ventilation be 
represented by a rise of carbonic acid gas within the school 
room of three parts in ten thousand over that existing in 
out of door air, and let the worst supposedly tolerable ventila- 
tion be represented by a similar rise of twenty-one parts in ten 
thousand. What would be the real cost of that poor venti- 
lation? What the real gain of that good ventilation? 

For the sake of definiteness, let it be assumed that the 
school building accommodates six hundred scholars, and that 
the per capita cost for the school is eighty-five dollars per an- 
num, or a total of fifty-one thousand dollars per year. Let 
it be further assumed that the poorer air reduces the value 
of the work of the school room no more than fifteen per 
cent. — instead of the more probable twenty-five per cent. — 
through the dullness, slowness, and other faultiness of 
work on the part of the scholars and of teachers. That 
means an immediate yearly loss of fifteen per cent, on fifty- 
one thousand dollars, or seven thousand six hundred and 
fifty dollars. 

The cost of warming air to so ventilate all the rooms 
of the building that the carbonic acid increase should be 
but three in ten thousand, instead of twenty-one, and to 
maintain such ventilation for six hours per day, would aver- 
age, in coal burned, two-thirds of a ton per day, or three 
and one-third tons per week ; a total of some one hundred 
tons per year, at a cost of perhaps seven hundred and fifty 
dollars. To the cost of fuel for ventilation must be added 
that of interest on the cost of the ventilating plant, and the 
cost of repairs and deterioration of that plant, which should 
not exceed one thousand dollars per year; and a further 
cost of service required in connection with the ventilating 
plant, over that involved in a mere heating plant, of possibly 
three hundred dollars a year ; making a total cost for good 
ventilation of two thousand and fifty dollars per year, 
against a loss of seven thousand six hundred and forty due 
to bad ventilation. That seven thousand six hundred dol- 
lars loss to the public purse is equivalent to ninety school 
years, or seventeen thousand school days, immediately lost to 
the city's children. These losses are to be found in the dull- 



V 



Air and the School House 31 

ness, laxness, restlessness, the inattention, the labored and 
blundering work ; the impaired power of imparting on the 
part of the teacher and of recipiency on the part of the 
scholar; the complaining and insubordinate spirit; the in- 
creased occasion for and necessity of discipline ; the illness 
and absences of both teachers and scholars which are the 
well recognized school-room consequences of faulty school- 
house hygiene, of a want of a proper appreciation and ap- 
propriation of one of the two energy sources upon which 
physical vitality depends, pure air. 

The losses attributable to the vitiated air of school 
houses are by no means limited to those of the rooms them- 
selves. Inside the school rooms the penalties are many and 
severe, outside they are more and heavier; life's vitality in the 
aggregate impaired; the beginning of profitable life work 
delayed; the laboriousness of that work increased when 
begun, and the period of its extent shortened; the liability of 
contracting disease increased through reduced vitality; the 
expenses incident to sickness made greater; the liability in- 
curred to the greater severity of sickness when it comes; and 
the handicap invited which burdens and shortens and lends a 
minor key to all life's after work. 

On one side of this question of economy is energizing 
air in all its vast plenty and perfect purity, and the cheap- 
ness of warming it for winter use, practically one cent for 
each forty thousand cubic feet; and on the other side is the 
fullest store of vital energy procurable from nature's 
sources. In times past, present and to come that question 
has been, is and will be periodically threshed out under the 
flail of the humane hygienist because of the numbers of men, 
blind to benefits sacrificed, who have urged, do now and 
( will continue to urge the "saving" of that one cent. 

The supply of air to be furnished to healthy high school 



breathers in order to ensure a reasonable, though not gen- 
erous, wholesomeness of atmospheric environment is 
twenty-four hundred cubic feet an hour per capita; or, for 
a high school daily session, fourteen thousand four hundred 
cubic feet per capita. The per capita cost in fuel for warm- 
ing that quantity of air in average winter weather would be 



32 Air and the School House 

approximately one-third of a- cent -a day. The weekly cost 
in fuel of ventilation may therefore be placed at something 
less than two cents per capita. -A school year of fresh 
school-air costs no more than- three days'- meals for the 
scholar in our average homes. What other so large,, so 
lasting benefit could be purchased at so small a price? What 
other investment yields so rich returns? What parent with 
a spark of solicitous care for his offspring can possibly be- 
grudge the cost ? What taxpayer, caring and paying in this 
respect no more for his home and the common weal than 
for his tobacco pouch, can protest against that money in- 
vestment in pure air without exhibiting symptoms sug- 
gestive of inhumanity, if not of insanity? 

What then shall be said of committees, to whom are 
committed so much of the vital as well as the intellectual 
interests of our children and their future, when they treat 
ventilation as a luxury for the few rather than as the right 
of all who have a right to live? What shall be said of jani- 
tors more interested in currying the favor of the committee 
by their records for reducing coal consumption than in in- 
creasing the vital energy, the immediate working capacity, 
and the future productive working power of the hundreds 
and the thousands whose well-being is, in so large degree, 
in their keeping? What shall be said of the policy applied 
to this typical high school, which would save twenty hun- 
dred dollars in running expenses, and thereby lose seventy- 
six hundred in product? 

There is no public knee too large for accommodating 
such offenders, nor any public arm too strong for adminis- 
tering to them the discipline they merit. If what has been 
said is true, if the source of energy out of which issues life 
and which makes possible all vital energy is lodged for human 
taking and using in the foods supplied out of the earth, and in 
the free air which comes out of heaven, then for him who 
ignorantly, carelessly, or wilfully stands between man and his 
birthright, the doors most fit to open for his entrance, keeping 
and teaching are those of the reforming penitentiary, behind 
which he should be held until he shall awaken to the knowl- 
edge, the sanity and the works meet for repentance. 



/ 



